Patients are more likely to be seizure-free after surgery for temporal lobe epilepsy if the piriform-cortex is included in the resection, researchers report.

“The piriform cortex is part of the olfactory system, and so an important signal amplifier, hugely important in animals, less so in humans,” said Dr Matthias Koepp from the UK National Institute for Health Research, in London.

“Still, it looks like it is an important hub, or switch, which if removed as part of epilepsy surgery, can switch off the epilepsy arising from the temporal lobe,” he said.

Dr Koepp and colleagues assessed whether removal of the piriform cortex is associated with postoperative outcomes in their study of 107 patients with medically refractory, unilateral temporal lobe epilepsy.